Ernst Haffner - Blood Brothers

Their own choice? Not always, by no means! A youth spent in welfare, more or less apprenticed to crime, that isn’t a self-chosen destiny. And then: prior convictions! Untold numbers fail at the difficult glass-hard wall of bourgeois prejudice and desire for retribution. Untold numbers who might have liked to try a law-abiding life for a change.

First: the realization that the criminal basements as they are shown to us in scores of films no longer exist in Berlin today. All those basements on Linienstrasse, Marienstrasse, Auguststrasse, Joachimstrasse, Borsigstrasse and so on, they were forced out of business after the inflation. And the big beer joints with their lively oom-pah-pah music from early morning on, they are just waiting rooms for armies of pimps, unemployed and casual criminals. But a clientele like that isn’t enough to keep a place in business. What keeps these places going is prostitution. It alone keeps them going. It gets the johns in, and drives them to big bar-tabs. Unattached prostitutes aren’t great consumers of anything, they wander from table to table offering themselves, or cadging a drink from a guest who’s there for a thrill. And when there is something really happening in those places, then you may take it for granted that it’s all a setup, so that the voyeurs order another round, and tell their friends about this amazing underworld bar.

The stage set took up the underworld theme, dished up hundred-percent tall tales, and now the underworld itself is turning to the stage set, so as not to prove too much of a disappointment. It even advertises in the commercial section of the press. Between ads for feudal eateries and worldly palais de danse , you see the shout: “ Interested in experiencing the Berlin underworld? Try Europe’s best-known restaurant on Alexanderplatz!” Does it matter that the best-known restaurant in Europe is just a pickup joint? The underworld is in quotation marks. So much the better for the metropolis, if that was the full extent of its underworld. Alas, it’s too good to be true.

Alexanderplatz in the hours between 9 p.m. and midnight. Where to start in the confusion of humanity? Prostitution in every form. From the fifteen-year-old girl, just slipped out of welfare, to the sixty-year-old dreadnought, everyone is feverishly on the make. Male prostitutes, flocks of them, outside the toilets, in bus and tram stops, outside the big bars. Homeless of both sexes sniff around. Loiter, move off. Aimlessly. Sit on a pile of planks for the new underground station. “Move along now!” Police patrol. Move along, sure, where to? It’s almost tempting, the looming bulk of the police HQ on Alexanderplatz. There you can get something to eat and drink and a bed for the night. But only if the desperate fellow has hurled a brick through a shop window.

Pimping, with its specific grimness, is everywhere. Hundreds on Alexanderplatz alone. They own the street, and they certainly own the working girls. They stick to the punters like glue; yes, they animate flagging interest by talking up the girls. Human beings are touted and appraised like lame nags in a horse market.

A swarm of rowdy fun-seekers spills out of an underground beer joint next to the UFA cinema. Straightaway, the traffic is brought to a standstill. The crowd is milling around, growing all the time. At the core of the disturbance are a prostitute and her pimp. He is laying into the woman with both fists. She is standing doubled over, her hands protectively in front of her face. She looks like a beast in a slaughterhouse. From the crowd come enthusiastic shouts: “That’s right, Fritz, give it to her!” And Fritz doesn’t stint, he gives it to her all right. Not a finger, not a voice is raised on behalf of the woman. Surely, he is among friends here. If the woman gets a beating, she will have deserved it. Finally, the police turn up, clear a way through the surly wall. What happens? Nothing. The pimp has his papers on him, the victim is his wife. And the wife, when invited to by the police, declines to bring charges. She doesn’t want to be beaten to a pulp later on by her pimp husband’s close friends. “It looks worse than it is,” is all she says, the blood streaming from her nose.

The huddle of people breaks up. No more trouble. Interest is gone. The prostitute stands at a bus stop, sobbing and dabbing at her nose. “Now, that’s enough of that, Edith.” The pimp, perfectly amiable. And Edith tries desperately to shut up, but the occasional sob still shakes her. She pulls out lipstick and powder, to try and restore order to her teary face. Then they go, arm in arm, to the nearby Rehkeller.

It’s the only one of the so-called cellars to deserve the ascription of criminal dive. But even here everything is lite. Underworld is a style. A low-arched room with dim-colored lights. The ancient oft-painted walls give off an appalling reek of mold. A pianist makes despairing efforts to bang out a coherent sequence of notes from a tangle of wire in front of him. Clientele: the usual Alex mob, admittedly with very few tourists. Doesn’t promise much from the outside, the Rehkeller.

The Blood Brothers are sitting at a table in the deepest darkest corner of the bar. Sitting with them is a girl of seventeen or eighteen. Anneliese, the new sweetheart of the Brothers. Anneliese has come into the gang ever since, in some way still unknown to Ludwig, they have come into money. Ludwig shows up in his new coat. Anneliese welcomes him with a great smacking kiss. They have never met before, and Jonny explains to Ludwig that Anneliese is part of the gang. The other Brothers greet Ludwig with a facetious, “Evening, Herr Kaiweit.” Ludwig is flavor of the month. Anneliese sits on the lap of the “poor lad who was innocent and did time in Moabit,” and comforts him at any opportunity with kisses and petting. The first round of schnapps is brought, and they all solemnly intone: “Here’s to you, Ludwig.” Then he has to tell them all about it. How he was nabbed, the interrogation, his time in the Alex, the juvenile court hearing, the moment he spotted Auntie Elsie’s secret message to him on the inside of the sugar bag. What the food was like inside, how they treated him, and in minute detail, how he did his bunk in Friedrichstadt station. The transporter seemed to be a decent enough fellow, but freedom is freedom. The gang are ever so proud of their Ludwig when he tells them about picking up the discarded copy of the B. Z. on the train, and how that helped him get the money to make a call. My God, what a sharp lad! “Cheers! August Kaiweit!” And Jonny adds: “And here’s to us collaring the evildoer who tricked you in the first place.”

The pianist announces a rumba, and knocks out something that might equally well be a tango or a black bottom. The girls go looking for a few feet of space to dance with their sweethearts, and Anneliese grabs hold of Ludwig, who now has to go and rumba. This time yesterday he was still lying on a pallet in police detention, with the evening’s flour soup glugging in his belly, and the guards’ hobnailed boots clanking about in the corridor. “Kiss me, Anneliese,” he manages to whisper.

The bill is paid. The Blood Brothers move off. Where to now? What about the Mexiko? “Not there again,” replies Fred, grinning. The Alexander Quelle on Münzstrasse is an unappetizing place, but always packed. The din of the brass music is enough to blow the head off your pints, and the mass-produced tobacco smoke keeps the paper chains in a constant spin. Gang members of all ages, abjectest prostitution, layabouts, male and female beggars. They are, all of them, responsible for polishing the pate of the landlord, who can no longer stand to breathe the fug of his joint and stands outside the door. It is unbelievably full. The newest latecomer has to squeeze inside the door and yell for his beer or schnapps or whatever he wants. The gang barge their way through; of course there’s no space anywhere. Right at the back, in front of the upstairs toilets, they manage to huddle round a couple of already-occupied tables. They don’t mind being squashed together.